The Idaho AARP (formerly known as American Association of Retired Persons) is sending 20,000 signatures to the U.S. Congress, demanding that Social Security and Medicare be left out of budget cuts.
Cuts to SS and Medicare would adversely affect hundreds of thousands of Idahoans who paid into the system for decades.
Idaho’s Interconnect Solar Development has hired Germany’s Siemens to build a solar power plant.
The 20 megawatt plant will be built in Owyhee County, and supply power to the utility company Idaho Power.
Siemens says it will use parts built in its Chicago, Illinois, plant. Some good news for the U.S. economy.
Some idiot at CNN called the huge billion dollar car maker bailout loss for U.S. taxpayers “Excellent!”.
He justifies his statement by saying it’s better than the originally projected loss of $40 billion. What this idiot doesn’t seem to realize is that most taxpayers were against the bailouts, because they knew they would lose.
In total, between Chrysler and GM, the U.S. taxpayers lost $14 billion dollars in the auto maker bailout joke. But this guy at CNN thinks it’s great, calling it “…a mere $14 billion”.
The idiot goes on to claim that the U.S. government (taxpayers) would have lost huge tax revenues if Chrysler and GM went out of business. Hello, most of their sales are now outside the U.S., which means they’re not paying U.S. taxes on those sales.
Just like the U.S. government, the Canadian government has sold its shares of Chrysler stock to Fiat, at a loss.
Canada bailed out Chrysler’s operations in Canada, and it cost the Canadian taxpayers $810 million.
Canadian autoworkers union officials say their government should have held on to the stock a little longer, as a way of making sure Chrysler/Fiat doesn’t shut down the Canadian operations: “We’ve advocated all along for the Ontario and Canadian governments to retain those shares as leverage, to retain investment in Canada, but that decision wasn’t made and now we have to trust that Chrysler and Fiat will recognize the incredible contributions Canadian workers, and Canadian plants, have made in the turnaround of this company.”-Ken Lewenza, union rep
“We hope the scholarships will encourage American students to delve into China studies and other subjects in China in earnest.”-Zhang Jin, education exchange program
China’s Ministry of Education is ready to offer full university scholarships to students from the United States. The program actually started last year, and was officially announced in April of this year.
China has a plan to attract 500,000 foreign students to its universities by 2020. The plan also supports U.S. President Obama’s desire to send 100,000 U.S. students to China (so much for Obama’s support of U.S. higher education).
If you want to check out the full scholarship go to www.studyinchina.edu.cn , click on “english” to get the English version of the site.
Steve O’Bryan, vice president for F-35 business development at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, was in Japan, trying to push them to buy the controversial jet.
The main reason the F-35 is so controversial is that it’s taken far longer to develop, and it has cost U.S. taxpayers far more than originally estimated.
O’Bryan is hoping Japan will buy the F-35 to replace it’s aging F-4 Phantom 2 jets. Japan is one of the last countries still using the F-4. Also, some of Japan’s newer F-2 jets (a bigger version of the F-16) were destroyed by the March 11 tsunami.
Japan also uses the F-15 Eagle. In 2009 U.S. officials tried to convince Japan to buy the F-22 Raptor, but that deal fell through.
Lockheed Martin is selling the F-35 on the grounds that Japan needs to meet the growing threat from China’s latest aircraft designs. The problem is that Japan is already developing a stealth fighter of its own.
Lieutenant General Hideyuki Yoshioka says Japan’s prototype stealth fighter is expected to make its first test flight in 2014, about the same time that Lockheed Martin thinks it will be ready to finally mass produce the F-35. So much for the U.S. trying to sell the F-35 to Japan.
The U.S. Department of Labor reported that first time state unemployment claims jumped by 10,000, to 418,000. The numbers are for the week ending July 16.
The previous week’s drop in first time claims is due to the shortened work week (July 4 holiday). That means it’s very likely that the first week of July could have seen an increase in unemployment as well.
Once again, many “expert” employment annalists did not expect such a large increase in unemployment claims, for the week ending July 16.
The latest weekly first time unemployment claims numbers, continues a trend, now 15 weeks on. 15 weeks in a row that first time unemployment claims is above 400,000.
The current official unemployment rate is 9.2%. If our government was using the same unemployment rating system that was used during the time Bill Clinton was President, then official unemployment would be at 20%!
So what about all the noise about Chrysler supposedly paying off its bailout loan? In the end the U.S. taxpayers lost $1.3 billion.
The pay off was in the form of stock buy back. The United States government sold its remaining shares of Chrysler stock to Fiat. The result was a net loss for U.S. taxpayers. The U.S. Department of Treasury called it a “major accomplishment”!
Maybe if the federal government wasn’t so busy bailing out banks and corporations (along with its increasing war budget) it wouldn’t be in so much financial trouble right now.
An outbreak of e.coli in the water at Sandy Point Beach, at the Lucky Peak State Park in Idaho, could be caused by colder than normal weather.
Officials with Parks and Recreation think cold weather delayed the circulation of water through the swimming area.
Because winter like conditions lasted well into spring, the Army Corps of Engineers were not able to create the usual lagoon current, that normally flushes out the swimming area. The result is that officials suspect geese droppings built up in the water, resulting in high levels of e.coli.
The swimming area is now being flushed.
At the beginning of July, Idaho’s Department of Environmental Quality issued a no swimming warning for Sandy Point Beach, at Lucky Peak State Park, because of e.coli.
Officials claim warning signs are posted, but people who’re swimming in the contaminated water say “what signs?”: “We stopped and we were looking, we were looking for any kind of anything.”-Loretta Vincent of Boise
“We were swimming and had been swimming for quite some time before they finally came and told us.”-Claudia Craw of Meridian